The following disclosure relates generally to communications systems and, more particularly, to improving capacity gain while maintaining call performance in a wireless communications system.
CDMA digital cellular systems are currently in widespread use throughout North America providing telecommunications to mobile users. In order to meet the demand for transmission capacity within an available frequency band allocation, CDMA digital cellular systems divide a geographic area to be covered into a plurality of cell areas.
A base station is positioned within each cell that communicates to a plurality of mobile stations within the cell. In general, it is desired to have as few base stations as possible, since base stations are expensive, and require extensive effort in obtaining planning permission. In addition, in some areas, suitable base station sites may not be available. In order to minimize the number of base stations, each base station ideally has as large a capacity as possible in order to service as many mobile stations as possible. The key parameters that determine the capacity of a CDMA digital cellular system are: processing gain, ratio of energy per bit to noise power, voice activity factor, frequency reuse efficiency and the number of sectors in the cell-site antenna system.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method for maximizing capacity gain while maintaining call performance in a telecommunications system.